IT IS ODD how loosely politicians use literary allusions when
they are angry. The latest case of a quotable cap hardly fitting is M. Rene Mayer's denunciation of M. Francois Mauriac, the writer and Nobel Prize winner, under the thin disguise of Basile. Now Basile is the name of the slanderer in Beau- marchais's Mariage de Figaro and it is true that M. Mayer has recently been much exasperated by Mauriac's attacks on the use of torture by the Algerian police to extract confessions from suspects. But M. Mayer can hardly describe as slander the reports of brutality which have been widely published in the world press. And I hardly think that he would call the pastoral letter of the Archbishop of Algiers slander. But perhaps he has not seen the pastoral letter in question. That would scarcely be surprising as not a single non-Communist newspaper in Algeria has seen fit to mention it.
* * *
Previous page
